If I found out my competitors made sweetheart deals with hardware manufacturers so that their software worked better on their hardware than my software does, I'd be pissed.
> Would there be some sort of uproar if people found out that Firefox had special optimizations for common websites, for instance?
It would ruffle a few feathers if Chrome was optimized for Google properties, but ran their competitors' code with a performance penalty.
One of the issues in United States v Microsoft was that IE used optimized APIs that Microsoft's competitors, like Netscape, didn't have access to.
> If I found out my competitors made sweetheart deals with hardware manufacturers so that their software worked better on their hardware than my software does, I'd be pissed.
>If I found out my competitors made sweetheart deals with hardware manufacturers so that their software worked better on their hardware than my software does, I'd be pissed.
As long as they aren't actively sabotaging your software, I don't see why this is a problem. Adobe is clearly the market leader in photo editing. If adobe pays nvidia to improve performance of photoshop, why is that an issue? They aren't paying nvidia to make gimp worse.
Also "sweetheart deal" is a loaded term. What is your definition of sweetheart deal here?
> A sweetheart deal or sweetheart contract is a contractual agreement, usually worked out in secret, that greatly benefits some of the parties while inappropriately disadvantaging other parties or the public at large.
> A "sweetheart settlement" may also occur in a legal context. For example, in a class-action lawsuit the attorneys representing a class of plaintiffs may reach an agreement with the defendant in which the primary result is a lucrative fee for the attorneys rather than maximum compensation for the class members.
> Noted instances and allegations
> In a 1947 unionization dispute, San Francisco area grocery store owners claimed that other stores who had "given-in" to union demands had signed sweetheart deals with the unions.
> In a 1949 dispute between the rival American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) involving unionization of the laundry industry in Indianapolis, Indiana, a lawyer for the 42 laundry and dry-cleaning plants testified before the National Labor Relations Board that an AFL union contract was not a sweetheart deal between the employers and AFL union officials, as alleged by the CIO.
> Would there be some sort of uproar if people found out that Firefox had special optimizations for common websites, for instance?
It would ruffle a few feathers if Chrome was optimized for Google properties, but ran their competitors' code with a performance penalty.
One of the issues in United States v Microsoft was that IE used optimized APIs that Microsoft's competitors, like Netscape, didn't have access to.